Corman's World

A Fitting And Star-Studded Tribute To A True Indie Movie Maverick
Movie-making maverick Roger Corman gets his due in the fun and enlightening new documentary "Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel." One of my contemporary pet peeves is how everyone tells me they love movies, but then those same people have no sense of cinema history. I believe that to really love something, you have to have an understanding of it beyond what plays at the local mall! Corman is the classic example of someone who has always worked on the periphery of the traditional entertainment system, but who has left an indelible legacy within the film community. And I will pay Alex Stapleton's film the highest compliment: It made me want to go back and watch and/or re-watch a lot of films. From his cheesy low-budget films of the fifties, to a counter-culture leader in the sixties, to the master of exploitation in the seventies--Corman may not have always made good films, but he definitely seemed to have a pulse on what appealed to popular audiences. I think it's fair to...

CORMAN'S WORLD? HARDLY!
If someone had absolutely no idea who Roger Corman was, they would only get a fleeting and far-from-complete notion of him from this DVD. With way too much emphasis on his more recent, direct-to-video schlock one would hardly know that this amazing man is actually responsible for many, many very good movies! Why waste so much time on sleazy crap like DINOSHARK when Mr. Corman is responsible for both producing AND directing a damn good movie like FRANKENSTEIN UNBOUND? We see the poster for X - THE MAN WITH THE X-RAY EYES behind Mr. Corman in several of the interview segments - yet learn zip about it - or PREMATURE BURIAL or ST. VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE or VON RICHTOFEN AND BROWN or SECRET INVASION and so many more fine films. The Vincent Price/Poe cycle is barely touched upon. More time is spent in this documentary razzing the notoriously bad THE TERROR than praising any of the truly wonderful Poe films. On the sole basis of this documentary, Mr.Corman comes across as merely a...

Part of His World Anyway
Any fan of the prolific B-movie mogul Mr. Roger Corman should enjoy this bio-pic/documentary about his life and career. It focuses mainly on his early films and later work, and skims over those in between. Unfortunately, some of those were some of my favorites, like Battle Beyond The Stars. Aside from that though, this was an enjoyable documentary about a film-maker who played by his own rules and did things outside the studio system that had never been attempted before. He was the first real indy film maker on the Hollywood scene as it were. There are a lot of big name actors featured in this documentary, and it was fun to discover some who I hadn't realized had got there big breaks in Roger Corman films. If that sounds at all interesting to you, then you'd likely enjoy this incomplete biography of one of Tinsel Town's most innovative and off-beat film makers.

~ Kort

Click to Editorial Reviews